In the Cellar
Tim finds Jethra
[Back to Mad Art Project. This story picks up the evening after Substrate. We left Donovan at the mouth of Way-Crazy Cave, into which he and Tim found tracks of Moon Calves crawling. Tim, meanwhile, has gone by arrangement to meet Donnie Ross, who has Tim in a bind:
Door A: Donnie has his buddies in the sheriff’s office frame Tim for the murder of Jethra. Door B: Tim helps Donnie steal Jethra’s magic. Tim is pretending to choose Door B, but in fact he and Donovan are working on Backdoor C: Tim pretends to help Donnie while Donovan intercepts them and together Tim and Donovan rescue Jethra and stick it to Donnie Ross. We’ll see what happens …
Need to catch up? Check out the Table of Contents.]
You don’t deserve to hear how I met Donnie Ross that frosty evening in early spring 2024. You don’t get to know how our conversation unfolded. Not because I mind making you wince at the sordid details, but because Donnie Ross, with all his backcountry puissance, was, ultimately, not worth my time.
Picture it thus: Jethra (I imagined) was trapped dead-center of a spiderweb. I was caught peripherally, struggling toward her. Donnie Ross played the role of spider.
Have I mentioned I’m sometimes wrong?
No?
Well, it so rarely happens.
But what if I tell you Jethra Holloway, not Donnie Ross, was weaving the web all along?
In fairness, she had spun herself almost to nothing with her plan, which was not a plan so much as a discipline both practiced in face of, and bringing about, an unforeseen but inevitable conclusion.
— No, I can’t do it. I can’t tell you this way. It’s too abstract. When I close my eyes, all I see is her face.
Even here, I have to step back. My earlier chapters have misled you. I hadn’t seen Jethra for 25 years. I’ve been writing about now-Jethra as I imagined her, a superabundance of young Jethra with her red-rose cheeks and powerful, dimpled body and terminal inability to be anything but sweet.
Idiot.
Yes, I mean me.
Let me tell you what a quarter century of anemia, a physically demanding job, a CrossFit membership, and near-nonstop periods do to a body.
Jethra’s face, when I saw it loom out of the dark within arms’ reach of mine, was new-moon white. She had not gained weight, as I imagined, but lost it. Her wide-set violet eyes looked shadowed, now, and silvery. Her once heart-shaped face had grown wolfish. Her curls hung forward, still black, but greasy and thin.
She was wearing one of her cherry-print tops, sleeveless and ruffled best I could tell in the lamplight, with a man’s gray cardigan over it. The cardigan had drooped off one of her shoulders. She still had heavy shoulders, but her skin fell in deeply around her collarbone and where the chiseled muscles met. She was burning up or bleeding out every ounce she ate, leaving nothing for health or ease.
And she looked so cold. I reached up to pull her sweater back into place. My hand moved as if through molasses.
I was ensorcelled for sure, or drugged, I thought. I tried to remember what had happened to me. Whiskey, lamplight, swarthy skin, musk and sulfur. Heat —
But it was cold here. I lay on a chilly dirt floor. Pebbles drilled into my back.
Jethra’s breath on my face drew me back to her. Still milky and slightly sour, still an infant’s breath.
“Who are you?” she asked. “Do I know you?”
Of course she wouldn’t. We had both changed. I shook my head. The movement made the lamplight spin. One lamp, I realized. We were in a half-finished room, part brick that looked a century old, part cave. Low, natural ceiling, a few finger-like stalactites at the seams. This had been a waterway once. Shadows everywhere.
I answered, “You never knew me … ”
Her pupils, already wide, dilated. “Tina?”
I could barely speak. I don’t know what he did to me. But I held the line. “That was never my name.”
She opened her mouth a few times. Her breath still touched my lips. “But … but I don’t remember your other name.”
“Tim.”
She started to speak. I cut her off, suddenly unable to bear an apology. “It’s all right. My name doesn’t matter. Don’t laugh — ” I tried to lift my head and failed — “Don’t laugh, but I’ve come to rescue you.”
She looked at me with wonder. Then she smiled.
Then, I would have known her anywhere.
“What did he do, kiss you?” she asked.
I nodded.
“The fairy’s kiss,” she said. “I’ve seen him give it to his men. He loans his power with it. I guess he knew it wouldn’t work on me. Thank god.”
“How did he get you, then?”
Her smile turned sad. “Prayed at me. Washed my feet. The water of life. I didn’t think I was religious, but — but my heart was so thirsty. And I never knew.”
I’ve felt plenty of rage on Jethra’s behalf, but this was a new flavor. On the strength of it, I struggled halfway to sitting. Spikes of pain pierced my temples, but it was like a caffeine headache — clarifying. I shivered all over, as if shaking something off.
“You know that’s not religion, right?” I said. “You know that’s a lie?”
Jethra nodded, but she didn’t look convinced.
I suppose there’s a spiritual libido just as there is a physical one, but our hankering for god doesn’t mean there’s anyone there to answer that need. At least I got my kiss, and if I didn’t have things to do, I would have gladly let that be my last minute on earth.
“If he was that powerful,” I said, still trying to raise myself, “he wouldn’t have to resort to all these shenanigans. I don’t know what he had to do to get you here, but you should have seen the baroque nonsense he pulled on me, half-drowned me in the river, completely drowned my Triumph Spitfire — of course — and left your pink sweater in my car somehow for the authorities to find when they dredged it up.”
Jethra smiled again. “You always wanted a beautiful car.”
She put her arm under my shoulders and took my hand to help me sit upright. She smelled like someone who lived underground and hadn’t had more than cat baths for months. Feral, loamy, oniony. My eyes smarted. New pathways formed in my mind. So this is what I love, I thought.
Not Jethra but antiJethra, though of course I’d had it backward — hard, white-faced Jethra with her sharp cheekbones and luminous eyes had been coming into being for years, while I dreamed her rounder and redder … and yet love flowed forward, carrying me with it like so much flotsam.
But what was happening now? What was she doing to me? Lifting me up from the hard ground where Donnie Ross had dropped me. I fought to focus.
Clearly Jethra was used to lifting people — she would be, she did it professionally. She handled me as gently and powerfully as an adult helping a child. But she didn’t touch me as she used to, with reverence and jubilation. Her grasp was colder now. Something pinched my heart, but I went on with my lecture:
“He thinks he has us because we can’t get up through the cellar door. He imagines you’ll — we’ll — ” This was hazy because I wasn’t sure what he imagined. “You’ll try to help me and — ”
Now that I was sitting up, I could see the dirt beneath us. A ridge — water patterns? I peered at the floor for a few seconds, then warned Jethra to stillness with a raised hand.
She knelt there with her hands on her knees while I explored. Under the dusty surface, my fingers found concentric curves. Carvings in stone. An elaborately incised circle, zigzags between arcs, with a seven-pointed star etched across it, and Jethra in the middle.
I scratched my head. “Don’t do anything, and for god’s sake, don’t help me any kind of supernatural way. He thinks you’ll use your … your art … and he’ll capture your power with this sigil-thingy.”
“My blood?” She breathed out, then gasped with laughter. “You can hardly say it now — what has happened to you? You used to have so many names … your special sauce … your disgusting excrescence … ”
I had forgotten.
“Your clumpy ketchup … your perpetual abortion … ”
“Please stop.”
“Stop? Your cruelty has been my lifeline. It was all I could rely on to bring you to me.”
She coughed. Her chest rattled, but she didn’t pay it much attention. Pneumonia, I thought. I wondered how long she’d been living in this cave and whether she had a doctor she could see. But she had hurt my feelings, so I said, “Of course you find my little pleasantries inspiring: like any other woman, you’re so vain, desperate, and delusional you imagine every kick is a kiss. Still, you’re the only one I’ve heard of who — ”
But new, fierce Jethra had lost all awe of me. She put her hand over my mouth. “Of course, yes, why not? Love hopes.”
She released me, tracing the line from my nose to my lip. “You never really hurt me, not after I knew you.”
“But I tried to hurt you. Let’s leave it at that.” I took her hand, holding it to my cheek. “I’m here. Your spell worked.”
On the word spell she picked up a new train of thought. “It isn’t a spell. That’s the whole trick on Donnie Ross — on that judge — on the whole world. On you, too, except you always saw through it. It isn’t a spell. I mean the political part is how people react to it — it’s a big fat joke on them, again. It doesn’t mean anything except as my meaning, my feelings. And since I can’t stop it now no matter how I feel, it’s not even that. It’s always, only, just blood.”
“Heart-breaking amounts, though.” I studied her. “And the joke’s on you, looks like. Here you are locked in a cellar while they go to and fro on the earth like Satan.”
Hearing myself, I frowned. I’ve never used religious turns of phrase. Must be the country getting back into my blood.
Jethra answered, as she always had, “You don’t understand … ”
Again I interrupted. “You aren’t well. We should go.”
But I was thinking: Jethra doesn’t know about the Moon Calves. She doesn’t know what she’s created.
And also: Jethra, not Donnie Ross, worked all this havoc. Not out of magic, but of our reaction to her blood. We’ve been dancing her tune all along. She’s been absolutely consistent, steady in her purpose, while we’ve run hog-wild.
I didn’t mind it, though. Why should she change? She should be exactly Jethra. I touched my Sig Sauer to comfort myself then filled my lungs with enough breath to stand up.
“Go where?” Jethra asked, standing as I did. “Like you said, we can’t get out.”
“There’s a back door,” I said. “Donovan’s coming to lead us out. Bet you didn’t see that coming — and I know Boss Hawg didn’t. But he’ll be around here somewhere. Let’s move.”